Service providers in respect of consumption type services, such as data communication services, telephony, multi-media content consumption, and electricity supply services, typically provide their customers with a limited number of fixed contracts to elect from. These contracts are typically entered into for a fixed period, such as two years, and include a fixed service definition for the contract price. The contract is typically billed on a monthly basis and the cost of the contract is thus expressed as a monthly figure.
In some instances, contracts are also enacted for shorter periods, such as days. This extends particularly to pre-paid services.
Billing and rating functions for the above mentioned consumption type services are typically implemented as a core function of a service provider.
This approach introduces inflexibility in bringing new innovative products to the market and to consumers. The total cost of ownership of these solutions is typically very high, and these solutions typically have a high cost component attributed to their interdependencies on other nodes and solutions within the service provider's core systems. Rating across multiple service providers is also complicated and expensive.
Further, contracts for these types of services may be enacted at specific times, for example at midnight on the first day of a month or other billing cycle. The enactment of a number of contracts at the same time can place a load on the underlying systems and hardware, and may lead to degraded service quality especially if this involves a transaction between the Customer Communication Centre (providing an interface to the charging or billing system) and the User Equipment (“UE”, see below). Each UE has a so-called time-to-live in respect of the enactment of a new contract relating to its service consumption. Where a large number of UE's have the same time-to-live an expected spike in demand on the system may occur that places an increased load on the service network. This is especially prevalent with mobile communication services.
A further aspect of consumption type service contracts is that incentives are provided in the form of discounted service rates. These incentives are decided upon by the service provider and depend, amongst other factors, on demand for the service. For example, with mobile communication devices, a service provider may offer discounted call or data rates in a specific area or at a specific time. The aim of this is to incentivise consumers to make use of the service in such an area or at such a time, rather than in other areas or at other times when demand is higher. The benefit for the service provider is that network load is reduced for peak demand areas or times. For the consumer the benefit is paying less for the same consumption of service. If a consumer is not willing to consume the service at a different time or in a different place, he is not penalised, but simply pays the contracted rate.
A risk with offering such discounts is that it is possible for a consumer to provide, through his UE, false data to a service provider, for example in respect of its actual location or time data, in order to receive a discount for which he does not qualify.
A consumer may obtain, for example from the Internet, a listing of geographic locations or time slots within which discounted call or data rates apply. It may then be possible for the consumer to hack into the operating system of his UE to provide fraudulent location data to the service provider making it appear that the UE is actually within a discounted geographic location. The consumer is thus charged at discounted rates for consuming services in a non-discounted geographic location. Apart from being fraudulent, this behaviour also defeats the purpose of the discount system which is to incentivise consumers to use services in low demand geographic locations or in low demand time periods.
It is not only location data that may be fraudulently submitted in this manner. It is for example also possible to submit incorrect time data to the service provider, which in conjunction with incorrect location data effectively places the consumer, as far as billing of service consumption is concerned, in a different time and place.
It is possible for the network to determine the actual location data and local time of a UE, but this consumes network capacity and has a cost implication, and practically cannot be done for all UE all of the time.
In this specification the phrase “user equipment” or “UE” refers to a hardware device that a user uses to exploit the services offered by a service provider, for example a mobile telephone or a communication enabled laptop or tablet, or machine-to-machine (“M2M”) type devices such as fridges, home automation systems, and sensors.
In this specification the phrase “charging system” refers to the Real Time Charging Platform used by a service provider to handle the billing of consumed services in respect of its customers.
In this specification the term “enacting” means the act of contracting between a service provider and a UE for the provision of services by the service provider and use thereof by the UE, at agreed terms with respect to, amongst others, cost and duration, to enable the UE to consume services from such service provider in terms of the specific contract.
In this specification the term “enforcing” means the selection of a contract for use by a UE at any time, so that specific services from the service provider consumed by the UE is rated and billed in terms of that specific contract by the UE.
In this specification the term “time to live” means the period during which the service contract is valid, typically measured from when the contract is enforced (i.e. is issued by the service provider's charging system and accepted by the consumer).